Author: Deanna Gibson

This article was originally delivered as a lecture at the Art Gallery of Ontario as part of a series of talks and discussions which accompanied the exhibition “Dan Graham: Public/Private,” June 29-Septemper 25, 1994. The text, which is an excerpt of a longer version, retains the rhythm and, more importantly for the author for the author, some of the idiosyncrasies of the orginal oral presentation. You could say that my deployment of time here, tonight, is in part a response to what Graham has said about the “immediate image” – those are his words – and about the “neutral, “timeless”

Visual Art Source Outpost Art Spatiality or dimensionality is the crux of this imaginative capacitation. The spatiality of Therrien’s art differs from the phenomenological inscription of the viewer in the work that was Minimalism’s signal achievement. Minimalism linked the sculptural object to its surroundings and made the experience of the work contingent on the shifting position of the spectator in real space. Minimalist space, however, was logical and geometrical and was bound by a positivist analytical outlook. Minimalism’s shortcomings were connected to its materialism and its deluded emulation of a scientific model of objectivity. It failed to speak to the

The copyist, certainly, does not invent; he reproduces the lines and prospective colors of the model–it is the basic rule of the exercise–but to get there it is essential for him to rediscover the speed, the rhythm, and the original movements of the artist, in a word to follow in his footsteps and to empathize with him. He does not advance bit by bit, hesitantly, but by reconstructing with a faithfulness at once finicky and inspired the initial sequence of thoughts and emotions that gave rise to the work: as Wang Wei the Elder (415-443) wrote, “such paintings cannot be

Hokusai was young enough when one of his uncles adopted him with a dream that he will succeed in their family business. His uncle was working as a mirror polisher at that time in the house of the commander in chief. Right from the childhood, he was guided to perform his job perfectly so that he can lead a bright future by establishing a direct contact with the upper-class society. Although he started working with his uncle when he was only 6 years old, with time he developed a different passion towards artwork and ultimately started separating himself from his

A comprehensive examination of Russian art of the 1990s has been overdue. The Kraftemessen project was created to compensate this. The curators, Margarita Tupitsyn, Boris Groys and Victor Misiano, provide three different interpretations of post-Soviet visual culture. The list of the people involved in the realization of this project includes — among others — Haralampi G. Oroschakoff (the concept), Johanna zu Eltz (the project co-ordinator), and Diana von Hohenthal (of Hohenthal and Littler Gallery in Munich). Oroschakoff also curated the show at the Academie der Bildenden Kunste, where viewers became acquainted with the works of Ivan Chuikov, Nikita Alekseev, Konstantin

This installation by Genevieve Cadieux brought to mind an observation made by Margaret Atwood in her classic study of Canadian literature, Survival. She wrote that Canadian poets, particularly poets writing in French in Quebec, seem acutely interested in “what goes on inside the coffin.” Inside Cadieux’s twelve-foot-long trapezoid-sided glass sarcophagus, entitled Broken Memory, was nothing but empty space, and on the floor, tangles of electrical wiring leading to sound speakers enclosed at each end of the structure. From these speakers emanated cries of female distress that were both horrifying and mesmerizing. At times these moans were one register away from

Vern Hume and Don Stein’s CD-ROM installation, Undiscovery, is a multimedia database that deals with the discovery and subsequent colonization of Banff, and explores the park area in the context of changing perceptions of space, movement and identity brought about by advances in digital technology and tendencies toward globalization. Rather than drawing borders, this experience involves an active trajectory between places, identities and social formations. Undiscovery embodies a peculiarly twentieth-century preoccupation with art and revolution playing themselves out in a realm of amusements and commodities. Constructed like an interactive video arcade game, the software invites “cyber-explorers” to navigate their own